ss - happy Easter!

happiness is coffee after 40 days without!

hello to all at Sunday Sketches and Happy Easter to all! I have taken a long blogging Sabbatical which coincided with the rather odd choice to take a 40 day coffee sabbatical -- I gave up coffee for Lent!!! Full disclosure: I grew up Catholic but am not particularly formally religious though I do love the doctrine & discipline which religious experiences grant. Hence, coffee.

 I've done this for the past 4 years - one year giving up cooked foods (IE going 'raw), the next year sweets, the year following cigarettes, and this year... coffee.

Weirdly, of all the things I've given up, coffee has been the worst! Re. foods, a lot in my diet is raw anyway, and re. sweets & smokes there;s always the sense that the stuff is no earthly good for you anyway (in fact, thanks to doing it last year I pretty much gave up cigaretes altogether!) But coffee, it just seemed so cruel and unusual and unesesary - and it really took its toll in weird ways, like losing all desire to blog.

Re the drawing for Sunday Sketches, this is one thing I did manage to accomplish - finish a drawing I had been owing people for ages now (LOL!!) still have to cut it up and mail it, though! It's the sort of drawing that coulda taken another 5 years to complete, so I finally decided to just give up the ghost & call it DONE.

Hope all are having a magnificent weekend!

Sunday Sketches - Drawing Update

Hi all at Sunday Sketches! Nice to see everyone again!

This is an update on the large Epic Drawing I was mentioning earlier. As can be seen, this section got a bit crazy and chaotic! I am actually pretty ashamed because I was supposed to finish this drawing literally 6 months ago, and cut it up and send it to different people (those affiliated with my Epic Painting Project - wow, what a long time ago that was!!!!) I have had trouble finishing it (an understatement!!!!) but hopefully when I finally finish it and send of the pieces, everyone will understand.

Well, the holidays are approaching, and along it, a birthday for some of us. My birthday this year will be particularly eventful, as it also will fall on the alleged Mayan Doomsday Event (that's right.... Dec 21st). So.... we'll see, won't we? Would love anyone to post their opinions on this epoch changing event (LOL!!!)

Sunday Sketches - Turner project drawings

Hi all, have not been around for a long time! Been spending my time in pursuit of art fairs.

Update: I recovered my painting after all! Thanks to all who expressed support during my challenging time. Did so 2 weeks ago or maybe only one - times runs together for me lately.

Also been having technical issues. I am sharing this as another Public Service Announcement since it is an issue which undoubtedly is of great importance to art bloggers. If you have the patience to read through all the semi technical stuff, read below today's post! If you don't I will just state it in 30 words or less:

Do not use a Wordpress.com blog for your art blog! They will pull it offline unannounced if you dare place a link to a fundraising site such as IndieGogo. If you have a Wordpress (non self hosted site) back it up immediately.

As far as these drawings, they are part of the long-overdue rewards I offered folks who helped contribute to my Kickstarter campaign. It started out based on images that the donors suggested in relation to the question "what is your earliest memory?" I have read that this question gives one great insight intoa person's character and life outcome. The link specifically is the book this idea comes from.

The idea is to create a large joined drawing out of all the disparate pieces others make. I had better images of the entirety elsewhere but can't find it right now so hope all can enjoy this one.

Have a great Sunday! Will strive to visit everyone this time which is sthg I'd not managed recently - one reason I'd stopped blogging. Nice to visit Sunday Sketches again.

More re web troubles:
(for those interested/concerned) I think its kind of funny that lately am having all these bizarre misadventures that are allowing a didactic approach to blogging LOL  - well, hopefully others are more careful, etc than me

This is all related to a blog called marshallcommunityarts.com that I have had  through wordpress.com (NOT self hosted) and with the purchase of the URL upgrade. This was the blog I used to document a lot of the work that Jim and I do re. art and whatnot in the area.

My relationship with Wordpress officially terminated last night, when I decided to do a blog update  sharing a bit re upcoming events for us, but also where I decided to put in a plug for a random local guy who's trying to raise funds for a TV project here in Madison County. I have since reposted that post here. He's using the Indie GoGo platform. After posting it, I found that the wordpress dashboard seemed to freeze up, so I went off to do other things to wait for it to do whatever it felt it needed to do. I came back and found that my account was no longer viewable, and that every time I tried to view it thru my URL, I saw "this blog has been suspended due to violations to the TOS".

I was unable to access my dashboard at all, so i chose to rebuild the entire site from scratch by cutting & pasting off google cache (c. 5 hours & loads of fun at 4am). When I was finally able to access it this morning, the message I got was the same, with the additional caveat of "if your blog is designed to promote affiliate links, get rich quick programs, banner ads, consists solely or mostly of duplicate or automatically generated material, or is part of a search engine marketing campign, Wordpress.com is not the place for you." 


Most of the above is preposterous in relation to my humble little art blog I've been updating quasi religiously since June of last year. So the only 'charge' worth looking at is that of "affiliate links" or "banner ads". I placed one banner ad for my Zibbet store, and mentioned said store in one post - this was weeks ago, and received no problem or reprimand. I have also mentioned fundraising campaigns. Aside from my Kickstarter one, I once mentioned a fundraising campaign (months ago) for our own stuff, and most lately, I posted a link to the guy's campaign.


Wordpress' immediate reaction (automated banning of my blog) to my post re Indie GoGo's campaign leads me to believe that Wordpress has somehow flagged Indie Gogo campaign links from appearing on wordpress sites. Big mistake, especially in reference to an arts blog. If, aside from any indie gogo things, putting one measly banner with my arts store is somehow unacceptable, then Wordpress is probably not the way to go.


So... I have decided to migrate to Blogger. Have never had even one small problem with Blogger, and in fact I prefer it since all my other things are on Blogger anyway. I recommend anyone who has an art blog to be very careful with what you link with Wordpress, or how you use that blog platform, period. They seem to take no prisoners, as it were. We put way too much work into our site for someone to just pull it offline with no warning, and for no legitimate reason.